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Looking back at Lerwick No 7
By George Wheatman
I am not very good at figures above 10. Beyond that, I get a little dizzy, but I reckon that Norwich fanciers’ open wins with the North Road Championship Club are nearly double that number 18 in fact, if I have counted correctly.
Five of those have brought the coveted King’s Cup to the city after success from Lerwick. One man, Dave Fox, is the only member to have won from both Lerwick (2003) and Saxa Vord (2011) while another; Gordon Cockaday added victory from Dunbar in 2012 to his Lerwick win in 2005.
The sequence of King’s Cup winners from Norwich is as follows:
1962 Caston and Son (velocity 1233 yards per minute).
1996 Mal Waller (1770ypm).
2003 Fox and Wise (1622ypm).
2005 Gordon Cockaday (1403ypm).
2014 Mick Freeman (1479ypm).
In all cases, except one, the races were flown in a north-west wind, and Norwich fanciers, enthusiastic and expert supporters of the NRCC, are too good not to take advantage of a helping hand.
The one exception was the race won by Gordon Cockaday in 2005 when the wind was light, but very variable.
This is what I wrote at the time: “The North Road Championship Club is basking in one of its most successful ever Lerwick races. The race point that can kick you in the teeth one day, and then caress you with its benevolence the next, was in one of its kind moods on Saturday - but not before a little teasing for convoyer Phil Ringe.
“If he had any hair, Phil would have been tearing it out at 6am when a leaden sky sent a cold drizzle across the liberation site. The threat was that there would be no liberation.
“But the Shetland weather is unpredictable and soon the dismay turned to joy as the sky cleared, the sun came out and the visibility was everything a convoyer could ask for. The birds were away at 7-30am in a variable wind.
“That must have been the case for most of the journey for, pick a fancier and wherever he was, he would have a different wind direction to relate.
“The entry of 2,294 from 365 members was marginally down on last year but returns were excellent all over the NRCC territory and more than 200 members verified day arrivals.
“The winning bird was timed in at 6-31pm by 65-year-old builder Gordon Cockaday, of Costessy, Norwich, to record a provisional velocity of 1403ypm for the 527 mile flight.
“An experienced fancier, having been in the sport since 1962, Gordon was nearly caught out as the loft was still shut up when his winner arrived, but he did not lose too much time and, for once, the pigeon trapped well. Usually when homing from a race it is prone to doing a few laps of honour and spends valuable time flying round.
“Always a consistent bird, it had been raced on widowhood this season until being paired up in preparation for Lerwick, and was sent sitting eggs five days.
“A keen NRCC competitor, after a brief "blip" during a short spell of south road racing, Gordon has won Lerwick two or three times at club level, and has topped the section from Perth in the NRCC in the past.
“The winning pigeon, a two-year-old blue chequer Busschaert, was bred down from a batch of six for £99 bought from Louella Stud.
“The wind at Norwich, said Gordon, changed from south-west to west-north-west during the day, and he reckons his bird kept to the coast all the way home.”
Now 76 years old, Gordon remembers that day well. “It was a thrill. It was good to get decent weather, and it was a good pigeon on the day, in fact the best pigeon.”
Hell-bent on proving that the winner, named Rachel’s Boy, was more than just a good pigeon, Gordon sent it in search of a repeat King’s Cup performance the following year, but, unfortunately it did not make it, proving once again that Lerwick is no respecter of reputations.
The hen that won the Dunbar race for the Cockaday loft in 2012 has, however, raced successfully after its open win.
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Ironically, the first time that the King’s Cup was taken to Norwich was in 1962 just as Gordon was starting out in the sport. The winners then were Caston and Son.
In 1996, it was the turn of the late, highly respected, Mal Waller to win the big Lerwick race, and in 2003 committee member Dave Fox earned the chance to polish the King’s Cup.
Dave also won the race from Saxa Vord in 2011 when the North Road Championship Club celebrated its illustrious 110-year history with its longest race from Saxa Vord with a brilliant outcome, and a winning velocity of 2064ypm.
Fourth and latest NRCC Lerwick winner was Mick Freeman whose triumph came in 2014 on a velocity of 1479ypm.
This report at the time, I hope, reflects Mick’s ecstasy at his success:
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“Only those who have scored a hat-trick on the football field, hit a six at cricket, or dropped a hole in one on the golf course will know of the ecstasy that comes with success on the sports field. These are moments to savour; memories that linger.
“Now Mick Freeman is rejoicing in such feelings thanks to the performance of a pigeon he now calls Mad Mick 1 leaving the door open for any future stars of his Norwich loft to follow the trademark name.
Mick and Kay Freeman 2014
“Mad Mick? That is what Mr Freeman is called by his friends, to his face and on-line. Why? ‘Because I have done a few rum things in my time,’ he explained.
“Mad Mick 1 is a three-year-old blue cock bird which won the King’s Cup with a scintillating performance in the prestigious North Road Championship Club’s longest race of the season from Lerwick.
After a one-day holdover the winning velocity for the 526 miles to Mick’s loft was 1479 yards per minute, which prompts the theory that the bird, a Dordin x the Old East Anglian Pieds, perhaps made much of the trip out to sea where there was the assistance of a north wind.
“The winning pigeon had races from Driffield, Whitley Bay and Perth as build-up to the big test, and in 2012 showed a lot of promise in his performance from Thurso, and also flew on the south road from Guernsey as a young bird.
“Moreover, it is a broken pigeon as Mick and ever-supportive wife Kay moved home half-way through their short-lived four-year career as pigeon fanciers.
“Although 62 years of age, Mick had never been involved in the sport (apart from having two pigeons in a rabbit hutch when he was about 13) until it caught his attention through friends who were fanciers. He went along to watch their birds come home from races, and caught the bug.
“He competes in the strong Drayton club, and this year will be his fifth season of young bird racing, but already he is attracted to the distance races although some fanciers have told him that his birds are too big for long distance racing.
“’He is as big as a turkey,’” said Mick, “’but on a hard day he can do the job. I like flying the long distance but other fanciers told me that I had the wrong type of pigeons for that’.”
“The emphatic answer came with the Lerwick win.
“Mick missed the arrival of Mad Mick 1 and also his second bird, a pure Dordin, as he was decorating at a friend’s house, and Kay did the timing honours. She reported that the bird was exhausted ‘with his nose on his chest’ on landing, but soon recovered his composure.
“He sent 11, timed three on the day, and had eight back in the loft on the second day.
“When the ‘phone calls started, telling Mick that he was topping the leader board, he was ‘all of a dither’ waiting for news of the longer flyers. ‘I was wary of the Ipswich fanciers, and the boys from London.’
“Now he and Kay are making sure that they enjoy every moment of their success, and they have decided to retire Mad Mick 1 from racing.
“To the rear of their bungalow is a pretty big garden, measuring a quarter of an acre, and pleasant-looking lofts adorn the rear end of the garden.
“From the outset, Mick had a firm idea of the type of loft he wanted, and produced his designs on paper from which a joiner friend created a loft which Mick described as ‘a nice piece of garden furniture’.
“When he decided to take up the pigeon game, he answered an advertisement by a fancier in Swansea, and that is where the Dordins came from. The East Anglian Pieds came, via a friend, from an old fancier, no longer alive, in Lowestoft.
“Mick’s aim is to blend them into a long distance family. He reckons he is not doing too badly so far, but believes that it will take him something like eight years to reach his goal. ‘I have every confidence in the pigeons, and want to have a good quality team inside eight years’.
“In the meantime, a win from Lerwick will do nicely, thank you.
He has two youngsters off Mad Mick 1 in his 40-strong young bird team this year, which supplements his team of 40 old birds.
“Mick flies a completely natural system. ‘I don’t like to operate them as an assembly line’, he said. ‘The Lerwick winner was sent sitting. They are let out twice a day, and fed twice a day.
“’Norwich is a big city, but it has a tight knit pigeon racing community, and they have been smashing to me’,” said Mick.
There is no doubt that a strong contingent of them will be fighting hard to make it six wins for Norwich when the NRCC stages its 100th race from Lerwick on June 25th this year. |
CLICK HERE - Looking Back at Lerwick...No 8
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